


twisters chasing storms

by wayonwayout



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Bad Road Trip, Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 15:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15173468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayonwayout/pseuds/wayonwayout
Summary: Molly groans behind her softly, “Really? Did you really have to—oh, alright then—,” but he doesn’t step in, and he doesn’t stop her.“Staydown,” Beau growls, and the guy—did she ever get his name? She doesn’t think so—presses a hand to his face and swears, but doesn’t rise up off the floor.Caleb, half-turned on the bench where Beau had been sitting a moment before, takes a slow sip of his drink. “Tonight is not the night to fuck with us, friend,” he says.(Or: team assholes blasting off at the speed of light.)





	twisters chasing storms

**Author's Note:**

> once upon a time liam o'b said he's always wanted to play a dark campaign, and maybe this is sort of that. it's _one_ possibility that i see for what could come of the latest episode—not one i think they're going to take, but one that i find interesting all the same. hence, necessarily: SPOILERS for episode 25 and WARNINGS for depression, trauma, bad coping, moral quandaries, caleb's charisma score, and torture. title partially stolen from "chasing twisters" by delta rae. coming across [this stunning piece of post-ep art](https://galacticjonah-dnd.tumblr.com/post/175382581267/children-of-the-empire-agents-of-chaos-a-pact) got me kicked off on the idea and then i ran it into the ground—my thanks and apologies to the artist. i got screwy with some timelines and plot details because i uhhh can't be fucked! thank u for reading

It’s when Beau punches a guy and no one pulls her off him that she realizes they’re in trouble.

That’s not exactly true. It’s hard to miss that they’re in trouble, what with half their party having vanished, what with Nott drinking more again, what with Caleb muttering under his breath when he thinks no one’s listening, and what with Beau _not sleeping_ , like, at all. They’re pretty fucking deep in trouble—it doesn’t take an acutely perceptive person to tell. Okay? So she knew that. But it’s the punch that makes a whole new dimension of trouble obvious.

Molly groans behind her softly, “ _Really?_ Did you _really_ have to—oh, alright then—”, but he doesn’t step in, and he doesn’t stop her.

“Stay _down_ ,” Beau growls, and the guy—did she ever get his name? She doesn’t think so—presses a hand to his face and swears, but doesn’t rise up off the floor.

Caleb, half-turned on the bench where Beau had been sitting a moment before, takes a slow sip of his drink. “Tonight is not the night to fuck with us, friend,” he says.

The guy spits. “I’ll have you all run out of town.”

“Oh, that’s not helpful,” says Molly; Nott, eyes gleaming, demurs: “Bit of a non-sequitur, isn’t it.”

“Big word for a little goblin,” says Molly delightedly.

Nott flashes her teeth and says, “You seen my crossbow? My crossbow’s even bigger.”

Beau rolls her eyes. “Alright, enough. Can we please not get phallic? Like. Stop.” She sighs heavily, looking down at the guy, like, _can you believe this shit?_ “Tell me, friend,” she says, knocking one of his knees with her foot, “how’re you gonna get us run out of town when _you_ were stealing from _us?_ ”

“No one’ll care,” he says. “This is the North, _friend_. You come in, flashin’ your gold, askin’ questions. Better robbed and gone—no one’ll argue with that. You’re trouble, and we don’t _need_ trouble.”

He spits again, catching her boot, clear and thick, sliding down the leather toward the floor.

Caleb clears his throat. Beau throws a hand out, palm toward him, holding him still.

“Hey,” she says, friendly, too friendly, not like Fjord taught her. She hunkers down, elbows on her knees. “I can spit too, man.”

She catches him right in the face. She follows it up with an elbow to the temple, and no one does anything at all.

*

Someone knows something, because someone always does. They keep moving North. They’ve exhausted the wagon tracks, but they’re resourceful people—maybe too resourceful. There are other ways to follow a scent while it’s still fresh.

Molly nudges his horse closer over to hers, head ducked into his hood against the freezing rain. “We’ll have to be more careful,” he says.

“I know.”

“Small towns like that one defend their own. The Empire is hard on them—we saw it in the circus. People like us come in—”

“I _know_ , Molly.”

They ride a bit in silence. Beau keeps her eyes on the horizon, ahead and on all sides, watching the terrain for any incoming threat. In her peripheral vision, Molly twitches, fussing his hands over the reins, glancing at her, glancing back at Nott and Caleb in the cart. It could be anxiety, or caution, or guilt. She can’t tell with Molly. People make sense because people have histories—Molly doesn’t, and so Molly doesn’t make sense.

Well, no one’s ever called Beau indirect.

“You think I shouldn’t have hit that guy?”

Molly twists his hands into and out of thin leather. “I think what he did makes sense,” he says, and Beau is jolted enough to break her gaze, to turn and stare at him. “That’s all.”

Fuckin’ creepy fuckin’ carnies. He did not read her mind. He did _not_ , and Beau knows this, but it kinda feels like he fuckin’ did.

Molly glances behind them again. This time Beau looks too: at Caleb, eyes blank and distant, and Nott, curled against him, two small hands gripping one of his. Frumpking is flying above all of them, a wheeling, distant guardian.

Caleb—Caleb gets it. Molly doesn’t, maybe.

Beau reaches across and grabs at Molly’s hand on the reins, catching a handful of mane as well. He turns startled eyes on her but doesn’t pull away; Beau tightens her grip until her knuckles are white, because she doesn’t have time to waste on not _hammering the point in_.

“Listen,” she says. “This isn’t the time to be soft, or, or to have a conscience about this shit. Not about small shit. We have to be one-hundred-percent fucking vigilant up here, with you and Nott being how you are. And Caleb…”

Molly’s eyes narrow. “And Caleb?”

Beau shakes her head. “That’s his business. You want to know, you ask him. But this isn’t a good place for him to be. We get in, we get out. If knocking some heads makes that go faster—”

“Then we go faster,” Molly says. His mouth is twisted in a mocking smile, but she thinks maybe it’s directed at himself. And his eyes—his eyes are as serious as she’s ever seen them.

Beau nods. “They left those of us most likely to see that behind. Big mistake.”

From the cart, Caleb calls, “An encampment to the East. Abandoned. Might be tracks, _ja?_ ”

“ _Ja_ ,” Beau calls back, and shoots Molly a knife’s grin as she kicks W.C. into a gallop to scout it out.

*

“How much longer can a human go without sleep?” Nott asks her, two nights later. It’s so dark that she’s reduced down to only the glow of her eyes. “A couple days? A week?”

Beau slouches deeper into the packs at her back. “This couldn’t wait ‘til morning?”

“If you slept it could. It’s my watch, so I can talk if I please.”

Beau sighs loudly and turns resolutely on her side, away from Nott. “Maybe if you weren’t talking, I’d be sleeping.”

Facing this way, she can see Caleb on the other side of their low fire, gaze flickering under his eyelids; she can see Molly, curled in on himself, hands wrapped tightly around one of the idols to the Stormlord that Yasha had tucked into Jester’s haversack. Her eyes ache dryly. The fire dances and she can’t tell—she can’t tell if it’s the flames jittering or her brain, like maybe it’s skipping seconds and blurring together the remains of time into something _almost_ coherent but not quite.

“Beau.”

She flips back over. “Damn, Nott, come on, like you’re not a mess too. Let me process in my own time, all right? Fuck’s sake.”

The yellow eyes narrow. Then Nott is inching closer, hood slipping back, revealing a chapped-bitten mouth pursed tight and hair that’s been tangled by too much fussing. A mess, as Beau said. But she looks down at Beau with concern, like Beau needs her concern, like she has any right to be offering.

“Save it,” Beau warns, but Nott shakes her head.

“Fjord would tell you to take care of yourself.”

“Oh my _fucking—”_

“If you could restrain yourself from jumping down my throat for _two seconds_ , that would be great. I know that’s sort of your M.O., but let’s try new things tonight. Okay?”

Beau’s mouth snaps shut, and she stares, surprised. Nott uncurls her hands from the deep sleeves of her overcoat; she covers her mouth with one as she coughs uncomfortably.

“I,” Beau says, “am all ears.”

“That’s more me, really,” says Nott, tugging at one of her own.

“No, please. My M.O.?”

“Yes. Uh. I’ve been calling it _Insufferable Beau’s Insufferable M.O._ in my head—has a bit of a ring to it. If I ever get a journal, I’ll write it out like that, with caps.”

Beau scowls. “This is all fascinating, but if you’d like to say what you were gonna say—”

“You’re not insufferable, it’s just catchy.”

“Nott!”

“Right. Listen,” Nott says, and she pokes at Beau’s thigh with one nail. “I’m not just saying that to say something. It’s not a platitude. Fjord would tell you to take care of yourself because we _need_ you to. He’d tell you that we need you, and I agree.”

She looks solemn in the dark, and somehow… older. A strange thing, less wild than she should be. Somehow scarier for it.

When Beau says nothing, Nott looks down, inspecting her own knuckles. The green peeking through the grey of the bandages looks almost black in the inky night. “What you told me about your childhood was… awful. It must be on your mind, especially, right now.”

Beau swallows. “Yeah. I guess.”

“No one came after you, when you were taken.”

“Shit, Nott, nail it home, why don’t you—”

“We’re coming for them, Beau,” Nott says.

Beau swallows again, blinks, _hard_.

Hesitant fingers card through her loose hair. The nails catch a little on her shoulders when they reach the ends, which are split and tangled, but she doesn’t mind. She keeps her eyes closed and she breathes and she does _not_ cry.

Jester was always asking if she could play with Beau’s hair, the nights they shared a room together.

“Sleep,” Nott says. “Take the cart tomorrow—Caleb can ride.”

“I am absolutely, totally sure that he can’t.”

“He’ll try, for you. It’ll be adorable.”

The heaviness that’s been carrying under Beau’s eyelashes like sediment has sunk into her face, her mouth, down into her lungs and body. The crackling of the fire is like thunder, almost. She slips; she sleeps; she dreams of Yasha.

*

On the cart, the next day, she moves in and out of dozing as if through a doorway covered in a hazy veil; the world, not quite real, carries on around her. She overhears:

“You ride better than I would have expected.”

“I learned. When I was—a teenager, I guess.”

And:

“This’ll turn to snow soon, right? I’ve only seen snow a few times. I imagine it’ll be colder where we’re going than it was then.”

“ _Ja_. The cold in the North is different than any I’ve known otherwise. Arid. Beautiful, though, I suppose. The stark white of the land.”

“Mm. It’ll bring out your eyes, I imagine.”

“... uh, _ja_.” A pause. “Your earrings. Are lovely. But they might give you frostbite.”

Beside Beau, Nott shifts, grumbles. “Horrible.”

And:

“I was reading last night, Mollymauk—”

“You? No.”

“Yes, ha, me. I found something—it might relate to you. What you can do, and why you can do it. I know you do not want to excavate what is gone and past, but—I wonder—”

“If it might be useful.”

“You do not have to. I don’t expect anything, here. But I wasn’t going to keep it from you, either.”

“No. No, I appreciate you telling me.”

*

Three more towns cross their paths before they get their next big clue, and in each, it’s Molly who rampages through the local bookstores. Caleb, strangely, doesn’t. He stays in the inn or with their cart, head bent over only two books: the ones from his holsters. He makes no notes. His lips move as he reads. Sometimes, he pauses, and lifts his face toward the sky, and closes his eyes, something broken there that is all too easily read.

Molly comes back and they bend over his spoils together, speaking quietly. Molly stares at Caleb like Caleb stares at the page, curious verging on hungry, trying to peel away the layers and discover what’s hiding. Beau and Nott play cards. Beau is terrible at it, so sometimes Nott plays with other drinkers at the inn, and sometimes Beau has to crack some heads. _That_ is something she’s good at.

On the ride out of town number two, she holds out a hand, and Nott deposits half of the coin she’d taken from their latest unconscious antagonist into her palm.

“You are all terrible,” Molly declares.

“If people come asking for trouble, aren’t _they_ the terrible ones?” says Nott.

“Maybe everyone involved is terrible,” says Beau.

Caleb, huddled on the cart over Molly’s books, says what Beau has been thinking all along: “Jester and Fjord and Yasha were not terrible. This—” and he gestures around at all of them, “—is a terrible combination.”

“That’s slander,” says Molly. “I’m a good person. And—you know, you’re—you’re not all _great_ , sure, but you do good things. I like you.”

The rest of them look at him.

“Okay, that was weak,” he admits.

“We do good things for people when we can project on them,” says Caleb, blunt as ever. “We are assholes.”

“Molly and the assholes,” says Nott slowly; Beau nods and says, “Good name for a band.”

“When we find the others, we should flee to the Menagerie Coast,” Molly says. “Become a travelling musical troupe as a cover. I can just picture it.”

“That can be Plan B,” says Caleb, and turns back to his books.

*

That is the second town. Halfway to the third, Caleb makes a quiet noise, and then a louder one, and waves a hand urgently at Molly, not looking up from the page. Molly trots back on Loaf and leans over the side of the cart.

“Yes,” he says, reading quickly. “Yes, I see.”

They have some blood collected from the ground where Fjord and Jester and Yasha were taken. It could be any of theirs, or someone else’s, but they’d thought—if they met someone like Lucien’s tabaxi, then maybe. But maybe that’s not necessary.

Nott climbs gingerly onto Loaf and Molly settles down at Caleb’s side. Beau watches the horizon, listening to them murmur behind her. After a while they go quiet. Quieter—all the air around them goes silent and still. The horse under Beau twitches, dances sideways, pulls at the reins. And then—

Molly gasps.

“West,” he says. “West, past the fork, in the woods near the town. The valley. The trees—I can feel it.”

*

They find a pair of bloodied teeth in the forest beyond the town.

They’re stout and white in Caleb’s lights, stomped into the ground, one of them cracked down the middle but not quite broken apart. The roots are pink and red. Caleb crouches to inspect them first—Beau can’t move, Beau couldn’t move if it were life or fucking death, and Molly’s breathing deep like he might heave. Caleb is pale but blank. He holds up the one with the crack to the light, and says, very quietly, “They used pliers.”

*

“If I have to stare at that damned thing for one more minute—”

“I know. I know.”

Beau fixes her gaze on the stars overhead, and hopes she’s far enough away from the light of the fire that they won’t notice she’s awake.

“I can’t bloody sleep. It’s not just that—I close my eyes and I feel blood _everywhere_ , on my skin, inside me, inside _you_ —”

“Mollymauk—”

“It’s pounding in my head every minute. It’s so loud sometimes I think I’m still underground.”

“Molly. Gods.”

“Caleb, don’t—fuck, come on, don’t look at me like that. I’m sorry. I’m being maudlin. Come on, don’t give me that face.”

“I shouldn’t have told you what I found.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“It’s true.”

“We’re gaining—”

“And at what cost? I did this. I’m the reason you’re bent over in the cart every day, clutching at his _tusk_ —it’s _sick_ , Molly. This magic is diseased. I should have known better.”

“Hey. Come here. Come here.”

*

The trail splits shortly thereafter, a much smaller contingent turning toward Rexxentrum while the bulk of the wagons turn West. That’s when things really go to shit.

“This was no coincidence,” Caleb whispers, leaning toward her, voice heated even as his breath fogs up in the cold. “This is the Empire. This is _Trent_.”

“We don’t know that yet, so until anything’s confirmed, we need to _hold it the fuck together._ Caleb. I need you on this, man, I need you _here_.”

He waves a hand in the air. It’s shaking.

“We caught their attention at the battle pit. Jester and Fjord, with all their talent and their _flair_ , and then Yasha, when she said she was from Xhorhas. Keep _up_ , Beauregard.”

She grabs his wrist, holds him in place. It’s too tight. She knows and she doesn’t care. “Don’t you fucking condescend to me, Caleb. I know what you’re thinking and why it’s plausible, but we need to be _smart_ about this. You’re too deep in your head right now.”

“And you’re not? I know you, Beauregard. In some aspects—in this one—I might as well _be_ you.”

She doesn’t hit him, but she wants to.

“You think you’re the only one who can see sense,” he says. The trees stretch out above their heads, firewood scattered at their feet. She’d gone with him because she thought he might run. “Close enough to see, far enough away to rationalize. And it helps, to think I’m crazy. If I’m crazy then you can be strong. You always need to be strong.”

She tosses his wrist aside and shoves him with her free hand; he trips on a branch stumbling backwards and falls, head knocking against the frozen ground. The sound it makes shocks her into clarity—her eyes widen and she reaches out, belatedly, like maybe she can catch him. “Shit,” she stutters, “Shit, Caleb, I—”

He winces as he gets up onto his elbows, and when he touches the back of his head, his fingertips come away with the slightest red on them. He huffs a laugh. “How am I doing so far, Beauregard?”

She kneels. “You’re right,” she says, dropping her eyes to the ground, pressing her knuckles into the icy dirt until they sting like penance. “I’m just—I’m trying, Caleb. I’m trying to do like Fjord would.”

In her peripheral vision, she sees Caleb wipe his hand on his thigh, carelessly. “Fjord didn’t want you to be him, Beau. He wanted you to be you. He saw a leader in you. That’s what we need right now—a different kind of leader, perhaps.”

This is a bad thing to say, but she says it anyway: “I don’t know if I can trust you to speak right now and know I won’t hear Trent coming out, instead.”

The words hang heavy in the frigid air. It’s an awful place—the hard ground, the trees sinking under the weight of their own needles, the sunless grey sky above. She and Caleb, she’d thought at first, right after the others were taken: She and Caleb, they knew what was needed. They understood what this world would ask of them. But that hard cynicism, that bloodless utilitarianism—is it theirs, or is it the voices of the ones who made them this way, speaking through them even now?

“I am what was made of me,” says Caleb, uncanny and too smart as always. “ _And_ what I have made of myself. I know that I am right. You will see.”

His hands brace against the ground, scarred knuckles and dirty fingernails and bandages just like Nott’s. He pushes himself up. Beau watches his feet walk away from her, then punches the ground, hard, splitting her own knuckles against the brush and the ice.

*

In the next town, Beau watches, jaw dropped, as Caleb approaches a man wearing ragged leathers over old Imperial armour—the kind the Guard wore when she was just a kid. The man is only barely incognito. Caleb, meanwhile, is practically unrecognizable: he’s washed the skin that’s visible, brushed his hair and tucked it back behind his ears, but more than that, it’s the way he moves, a slow, confident stride, and the way he lifts his chin, just a little, brazenly, so he can look up at the other man directly.

“What the fuck,” says Molly, and Beau grips his knee and stares some more.

“Halfrid said we had fresh faces,” Caleb says, resting his elbow against the bar beside the man. “I did not believe her. Can I buy you a drink for some news, _freund_?”

Beau has never thought of Caleb as handsome, but the man—the Guard—clearly does. He looks at Caleb’s fingers sketching little nothing patterns on the wood surface of the bar, then up at his face, then down briefly at his mouth. He smiles. “Buy me one, and one for yourself, and we’ll see.”

“Am I hallucinating right now,” Molly says, not a question.

“Caleb is so talented,” Nott says, hands clasped to her face.

They eat and listen. Caleb drinks and laughs. They don’t talk of the war; they talk of a festival in a nearby city, and the oncoming winter storms, and that _little political mess_ in Zadash. After a while, Caleb touches the tips of his fingers to the other man’s hand and says, “Forgive me, but someone like you, someone who has been everywhere—what would make you stay in a place like this? No offence to my people and your hosts, of course.”

“And no further offence when I ask what someone like you and a mind like yours is doing in a place like this, as well,” says the man, and he catches Caleb’s fingers in his. Caleb reddens; it is all of a sudden too obvious that he wants to run. Molly stiffens beside Beau and Beau squeezes her hand on his knee tighter. But the moment passes and the man laughs, unsteady and drunk.

“A little clean-up, that’s all,” he says. He traces his thumb over Caleb’s wrist. “Some idiot drew all over the walls of the stable while we were passing through.”

Caleb goes very still. The Guard doesn’t notice. Beside Beau, Nott hisses, almost too soft to hear. _The stable._ The fucking stable, when it’s a good mile below freezing, they kept them in the fucking stable—

“The dumb shit paid for it, but of course it falls to a good worker like me—someone the officers can trust—to take care of the mess. Can’t delay the whole unit. We’re on a schedule, an’ all.”

“No,” says Caleb. The candles lining the bar flicker, all of them at the same time. “No,” Caleb says again, “we certainly can’t delay.”

He glances to the side, directly at Beau. Beau nods slowly.

Caleb leans forward to speak in the Guard’s ear, ducking his chin just a little so his hair falls forward into his face, a whispered touch against the Guard’s skin. “I have a place of my own,” he says. “If you would like…?”

The man looks at him; blinks. For a second Beau is gripped with fear. Then Caleb smiles, still right up close, and looks down, lashes long against his cheek. “Surely the schedule can accommodate one night? A reward, shall we say.” He licks his lips, taps his fingers against the bartop. “For your work for the Empire.”

The man exhales a laugh, like he can’t believe his luck. Beau stands up and leaves.

When Caleb emerges from the bar a minute later, the Guard’s arm around his shoulders, the Guard playing with the lapel of Caleb’s coat as Caleb keeps him from falling, Beau is there. One hit and he’s out. They drag him off of the street—into the stable, where half a drawing of a tiefling woman remains, bedecked in jewels, the rest wiped away.

“I’ll fucking kill him,” Beau says.

“As long as you do it slow,” Caleb says.

 _These aren’t the travels I thought I’d have,_ the wall proclaims, _but my faith is still my light._ The handwriting changes halfway through. There’s drops of deep red speckling the ground beneath.

Molly and Nott join them from the bar.

“I guess we’re not staying?” says Nott.

“Put him in the cart,” says Beau.

*

There’s a shack off the road about a mile out; they’d slept in it the night before. It was too small for anything like personal space so they’d curled up, Beau with her head on Molly’s stomach, Caleb with an arm over Nott’s waist. Now they pull the cart up outside of it, and Caleb and Beau carry the Guard inside. Molly hovers by the doorway.

Beau leaves Caleb to the knots—she’d refused to learn any kind of ropework with the monks. Molly looks about as sick as she feels, but she knows it’s not just the bindings for him.

She hooks a hand around his elbow and walks him a few steps away from the door.

“I can charm him,” Molly says hoarsely.

“You can dissemble with charm,” Beau says. “You can’t dissemble with pain.” The best is probably both, she figures. But she doesn’t need him for this one. She has Caleb.

Molly looks down at his boots in the frost. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t need you to like it,” Beau says, squeezing his arm. “I just need to know you’ll still be here with us when it’s done.”

“Fuck you, Beau,” says Molly, and she half-laughs with relief.

“Fuck you, Molly.”

From inside, they hear Caleb say, “I don’t want you in here, Nott.”

Something pained crosses Molly’s face, and he turns, busies himself with the horses. Beau steps back toward the door, just out of sight.

“I can help. I should be here, with you, I can help—”

“Not with this,” Caleb says, looking very grey in the dim light. He’s knelt down to be at her level; behind them, the Guard leans, bound, against the wall. “You should stay with Molly on this one. What is going to happen in this room… you don’t need to see this.”

“I’m not a child!” Nott snaps.

Caleb stares. Nott’s hands are balled into fists at her side; she glares at him, angrier than Beau has ever seen her.

“I am grateful for your protection and I know you care for me,” Nott says, each word bitten out with the staccato snap of a trigger, a string, and a bolt. “I am _trying_ to protect you too. As much as I can. That’s what a bargain is—an _exchange_ —and we made a bargain, didn’t we?”

“ _Ja_ ,” says Caleb, barely a whisper. “Yes, of course we did. Nott…”

“I’m not a child. I have your _back_.”

“I know you do.” Caleb leans back on his heels. He presses his hands to his face. “You do, every day.”

She reaches out, grabs his sleeves into her fists, still balled up so tightly. “Then let me stay with you.”

Caleb lowers his hands to meet her eyes. He curls his hands gently around her elbows. “I would have you stay with me for as long as you choose,” he says. “But I know—what you have told me, of where you come from. I would like to spare you this.”

Through the gap in the door, Beau can see how Nott’s eyes go wide and watery. Less angry than scared; maybe that was the case all along. “ _Fuck_ ,” Nott spits, like it’s punched out of her. “Caleb, gods, you should be spared it too.”

Caleb laughs, just a little. His knuckles shift as he squeezes Nott’s arms.

“Let’s call that a conversation for another day,” he says. “Go to Molly, Nott.”

And Nott does—shoves past Beau like she doesn’t even see her, leaving Caleb there, kneeling on the dirty floor. Half-turning, Beau sees Frumpkin flutter down from wherever he's been to settle on the hood of Nott's cloak, but a bird is small comfort compared to a cat. Nott doesn’t seem to notice.

Beau walks into the room and puts a hand on Caleb’s shoulder.

“I don’t need you for this,” she says, pretending like she knows what ‘ _this’_ really means. 

“Yes, you do,” he says, seeing through her like always.

When the Guard revives, it’s to this: lights floating in the corners of the room, and ropes tied tight around his wrists, and them, waiting, faces hard as slate.

“Wha—,” he says, his voice thick with drink and confusion, “What—the fuck—”

“Beauregard,” Caleb says, and she taps the Guard on his shoulder lightly, with just one finger, contemplating—then hits him there, _hard_.

He shouts, more in surprise than in pain.

“Loud,” Beau remarks, and Caleb nods and says, “That’s a good sign, I suppose.”

“What the fuck is this,” the Guard says. “Where the fuck am I?”

Caleb sighs. He looks at his hands, and then begins unwinding the bandages from around them.

“You know,” he says. “I thought for a time I could learn of other ways to exist in this world, and to use this power inside of me. But that was naive. I didn’t know I had any naiveté left in me.”

His hands are scarred in angry reds and browns in the dim light. He spreads one palm, stretching his fingers wide, and a flame appears, right in the center of it. Tawny gold burns down the length of his life line like the deepest heart of an ember.

“Beauregard,” he says, “hit him again, please.”

Beau does: boxes him around the ears to get his head ringing, then kicks him in the stomach, catches him with one hand under the sternum before he hits the ground face-first.

“Word of wisdom, buddy,” she says while she’s bent close. “If you’re going to answer questions, answer mine. You don’t want to get to his.”

“I have been relearning some old tricks,” Caleb says, nodding. “I was very good at them, before.”

“Might take you some time to get back in the swing of it?” Beau offers.

“ _Nein_. It is like riding a bicycle, I’m sure.”

“What’s a—bicycle—”

Beau hits him again.

It doesn’t feel good. But it does feel right. Standing beside Caleb, they stand the same; they learned the same tilt of the head, the same straight spine, and the same planted feet, even if they didn’t learn it from the same person. It’s not just the singularity of purpose. It’s something else, something that goes even deeper.

“Question one,” she says, drawing her staff. “Where are you taking our friends?”

The Guard stares at her, then at Caleb, his eyes reflecting the eerie light of Caleb’s flame. He squares his jaw. “I don’t know what you mean.”

 _Whack_.

“Three of ‘em. Troublemakers. Believe me, you’d remember.”

“My unit is headed to Xhorhas. We’re infantry—foot soldiers. We’re headed toward the war effort.”

_Whack._

“That’s not what you told my buddy, here. What did he say to you, Caleb?”

“Rexxentrum. Why were you headed to Rexxentrum, soldier? Rather the wrong direction, for the war effort.”

“And let me pre-empt whatever lie you’re about to tell—”

_Whack. Whack._

Red slides down the length of her staff towards her hands.

“Supplies,” gasping, “munitions, supplies, for fuck’s sake—”

The next hit has him bent over, wheezing, something wet and stringy coming up from his mouth. Beau’s hands slip on warm wood, heated from her skin and sweat. She glances at Caleb. He inspects the man from under lowered lashes; his fingers play idly around the fire in his palm, waving in and out of its heat, moving slowly as if under deep water.

He must notice her attention—he looks up and meets her gaze. Beau… doesn’t know what he sees there.

After a long moment, something like a kind of peace unfurls in his face, like the tide washing over a shore. He touches her arm with his free hand and, unthinking, she steps back. For the whole fucking life of her, she couldn’t have said if that was of her own will or of his.

He kneels down beside the Guard, lifting his face with bare fingers, holding the fire close to his chin. “Let’s start again. Small bites of information, _ja?_ Easily offered. One of our friends—she likes pastry. She is very blue and she likes pastry—she did those drawings that you so diligently cleaned off of the stable you kept her in. We saw them, so we know she was here—you can tell us that much, _ja_ _?_ It's not a secret if we already know. Tell me she was here, please.”

He moves the flame closer.

Beau fixes her gaze on the wall over the Guard’s shoulder until the shouting turns to words— “Yes, yes, yes— _fuck_ —Mother—Mother of Ravens, please—”

“ _Gut._ Good. Thank you.” The flame moves away. “I have some more questions, if you are amenable.”

From Beau’s position, she can only see a slice of Caleb’s face, lit orange by fire. The placidity there is awful, but not the worst—the worst is the distance in his eyes, like he's barely even there, and something else entirely is holding his body up in place. 

She hopes that’s true. She hopes he didn’t hear the Guard cry _Mother_.

Caleb sighs slightly, rocking back on his heels. “That one was easier because we already knew. Yes? I understand how this works, for you. From your side. I was a keen student, once—thorough, you might say.”

She can’t let him slip away. She steps forward, letting her knee nudge squarely against his back, and Caleb—Caleb leans back into her, just a little. Bending down, she swipes some dirt off of the side of the Guard's face that's still unmarred. “There were two sets of handwriting on the wall,” she says. “Our friend Yasha—you seen her? Big. Kinda hard to miss. We know you had her too.”

“Yes, yes,” the Guard babbles, the words rushing out in a tumble with the relief of release. “She—she—the Xhorhassian—”

“Oh,” says Caleb, “Oh, is that why you took her?”

“Yes—”

“But the others, they are not Xhorhassian.”

“I can’t—I can’t—”

“Hm.”

More fire.

“She’s the one they wanted! The—the—the—”

Caleb pulls back.

“The bounty,” the Guard says; each word comes out mangled between the spit and the blood spilling over his lips onto his chin. “It was for—that one. The lightning _crick-witch_. We were assigned to work with—to bring her to him. They were just there—but he—when he heard we had them too—he said—”

Caleb blinks, leans in, something gentle and understanding settling across his face. “Who is ‘he’, _freund_?”

*

Outside, after: sometime in the night it’s begun to snow.

“Do you remember,” Molly asks her, “When you told me this wasn’t the time to sweat the small shit?”

She does.

“That might’ve been a mistake,” he says, because he’s never been gentle with her, though his hands running up and down her arms are _very_ gentle.

An eerie melody reaches her ears. It’s Caleb, huddled in the cart, humming under his breath.  Nott clambers over the side and whispers to him; he doesn’t reply.

“Is that man still alive in there?” Molly asks.

“Caleb?”

“No. Yes. Him too.” Molly shakes his head. “The Guard, Beau.”

“Yeah.”

“Are we leaving him here? Are we people who leave him here?”

“Is that the moment where this becomes a problem for you?” Her voice is scraped hoarse to the edge of bleeding, but it doesn't break or give. She shakes her head. “Do what you want. If he wakes up, ask him what they’ve got Yasha drugged up on. He wouldn’t give us a straight answer.”

Something in his face goes cold and cracked.

Beau pushes past him toward the cart. There’s some blankets in her bag—bedding left behind in the night when their friends disappeared. She pulls them out and tosses them to Nott, who tucks them around Caleb, fussing until he is wholly covered.

Caleb looks up and meets Beau's eyes. He’s white everywhere but the deep shadows of his cheeks and under his eyes; his gaze is glacier blue. But he exhales softly, breath misting, and lifts a hand toward her from within his hunched bundle of blankets.

She takes his hand and clasps it hard.

*

(As they pass through the town again, Molly dismounts, whispers something to an innkeeper sweeping snow off her stoop. The woman nods. They ride on.

The Guard will survive a night in the cold. Fjord, Jester, and Yasha did.)

*

“Thunder tonight, you think?”

The clouds grow darker some nights than others. They’re always present, though, this far North, this close to winter. The road is cold and the snow deeper with every passing day.

When the clouds grow dark, sometimes it storms.

Nott lifts her hand and Frumpkin takes off into the skies. “Don’t get cooked,” she calls after him, and Beau huffs a laugh.

“Fried sparrow doesn’t sound good to you?”

“He’s too small to eat, really.”

The trail is fresher with every step, and Beau knows they’re getting closer. Molly’s like a hound at hunt—red eyes fixed firmly on the target, no longer fidgeting. He doesn’t look back at Caleb anymore, but sometimes Caleb comes up behind him, presses a hand to his spine, just for a moment.

The other day they’d reached a road that had been blocked by an avalanche—natural, maybe, or maybe it was the work of the men they were pursuing. Caleb had frowned, and held out his hands, and a great wave of fire had swept the snow away. The steam that filled the air in its wake nipped hotly against their cold-chapped faces. That fire—it was like nothing Beau had ever seen. 

“Nott?” she says, catching the goblin by the shoulder as she turns back toward the camp.

“Yes, Beau?”

“What do you think of—all this?” Beau hesitates, then gestures at herself. Gestures back toward the others. She asks because, in a strange way, Nott seems the least changed.

Nott looks at her, clever eyes assessing. “What do you mean?”

“What we’re doing. I mean—your boy has gotten pretty powerful, I guess.”

Nott nods slowly. “He has, hasn’t he.”

“It’s not what he wanted.”

They have a battle ahead. When they talk at night about what it might involve, spells like _haste_ or _enlarge_  don't make the cut so much, now. 

“Caleb and I," says Nott, "have always agreed on the difference between _wants_ and _needs_."

Beau—does a double-take.

Nott tugs on one ear sheepishly. “I _need_ a lot of things. A lot of the time.”

“I don’t know if that’s accurate,” says Beau.

“That’s fair,” says Nott.

Smoke begins to rise through the trees from their camp. Beau stomps through the snow toward Nott’s kill, unslinging her staff to make space for—whatever it is. Some kind of shaggy deer. Beau might be from the North, but she was _basically_ a city kid. 

Doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to know what it’s called to eat it.

“Beau,” Nott calls.

“Yeah?”

“I ran away from… some truly dark shit,” she says. “Before. More than I might ever tell any of you.”

Beau straightens, deer hefted up over her shoulder. In the darkening evening, Nott is a shadow, grey and white and black cloth blending into the trees and snow like she’s part of it. A slip of a girl, more dangerous the less you see of her. She is so solidly herself in this moment that it steals Beau’s breath from her throat.

“I’m watching,” Nott says. “If I believe I need to step in, I will.”

An odd kind of relief burns through Beau from the inside out.

“You know what? That’s comforting.”

“I’m a very comforting person.”

From the camp, Molly calls, “Nott, if you can’t find any game for us to eat, you have my permission to kill Beau.”

“Noted,” says Nott, with unholy relish.

The last of the light fades. Snow crunches underfoot as they make their way back toward the fire, Nott leading and Beau following her silhouette out of the dark. Beau looks at the wounded and wearied shapes of her friends, and something densely solid settles in her chest, like a heavy stone sinking through warm sand. Surrounded. Held. Safe.

Thunder rumbles overhead.

She kicks out at Molly's boot as she goes by. "I'd give you indigestion, motherfucker," she says, and grins like lightning when he laughs.  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> to be continued? probably? i have ideas. i'm also excitable and very happy to talk about those ideas so come find me @ wayonwayout dot tumblr dot com, and also just more broadly to speculate about what the events of ep 25 are going to mean for the campaign! it's like a full-on fuckin' Scully-Gets-Abducted-Moment and it's fully killing me. thank you for reading!


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